Documentary on Healthcare Reform

“Health, Money and Fear” is a 48 minute video, produced by an ER Doctor who has channeled almost three decades of being frustrated with the perverse incentives of our health care (non)system. It addresses three questions about the present healthcare system:

* Why does it cost so much? Technology, the fear of liability, the dwindling supply of primary care providers, the mass marketing of prescription drugs, chaos in medical records, our unrealistic expectations (especially at the end of life), the pressure for profits that come from all directions and all the medical insurance companies that add greatly to cost and little to health.

* What does it say about us? A lot!

* What can we do about it? Plenty, but if we focus more on access than the drivers of cost, we are going to be accelerating to the cliff.

We spend twice as much per capita as our competitors internationally. Our government already foots 60% of the bill. Many other nations have universal coverage. We don’t. By any measure of health, we get worse outcomes and our population is less happy with our system. How can we be this dumb?

“Health, Money and Fear” includes interviews with, among others, Dr. Arnold Relman, Dr. Marcia Angell (both former Editor-in-Chief NEJM), Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler (Co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program), Dr. John Kitzhaber (fellow ER Doctor/former Governor of Oregon), Paul Ginsberg (Director of the Center for Studying Health System Change), and Dan Callahan (a pioneer in the field of Medical Ethics).

The intended audience is the well educated voter, because, at its root, health care reform is less about health care than the political process in which special interests put pressure on our elected officials to the sustain status quo to the detriment of the rest of us. For more information and/or to view a trailer or the film, in chapters: www.ourailinghealthcare.com